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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Morganville: The Series Revitalizes Vampire Genre Just in Time for Halloween @MV_The_Series @RachelCaine

Rachel Caine’s Snarky Vampires Perfect for Geek & Sundry’s October
Line-upI've loved the Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine ever since I first met Claire, Shane and the gang in Glass Houses (book one). Now there's a web series which I watched all five webisodes today. I am a fan and I'm hooked on this series.

Geek & Sundry:
Rachel Caine is adapting her Morganville
Vampires books – fifteen (15) total – for a hilarious fright fest of a web
series. Each episode of the first season is expected to be 8-12 minutes long,
bringing the entire season to about an hour and is freely adapted by Rachel
from the first novel – Glass Houses. The
first season will begin airing on Geek
& Sundry October 27th with a prime schedule planned out… the
hope is that the first season finale lands on Halloween day.

Thanks to a passionate fanbase who fully supported the
Kickstarter project (and whose funds were then matched by Felicia Day’s Geek & Sundry), Morganville Vampires: Book Series
became Morganville: The Series and utilized
one of the fastest, most innovative platforms for upcoming shows. Through the
expansive reach of Youtube, Rachel’s fans can enjoy the show without the long
wait that comes through traditional television and also, reach a worldwide
audience faster. All around it made the most sense for a book series of this
size and caliber.

Watch the trailer below:

Even though web series are seen as non-traditional formats, the casting process and scouting for film locations remains normal. Auditions were held in Dallas, LA, Austin, New Orleans and some digital (to give fans of the books a chance at the spotlight too). Rachel wrote all the character monologues for the auditions. The entire show ended up being filmed on location in Dallas, Texas in four separate venues, including a coffee shop, a turn-of-last-century Victorian home, a hospital, and a university. Nearly every episode ends with Rachel’s infamous cliffhanger endings!

Switching from book to film writing was easier than Rachel expected. The very first thing she did, ended up setting the stage for the adaptation process and made it easier for her to focus on the story she wished to tell. Rachel says, “The first thing I tried to do, since I wrote the book in 2006, was to write down everything I remembered from it without re-reading it. That was fascinating, because what I wrote down was really the core story, and that turned out to be what needed to be told in the show. So while I did go back to the book, I did it for the purposes of review, not inspiration.”

Fans might be wondering how a 10-day- shoot in April 2014 could possibly yield a story they recognize, Rachel is confident the series delivers and explains, “For practical purposes, you can only have so many characters in a show with this running time, so some characters from the novel, while really interesting, ended up not being central to the plot (like Miranda). However, I did think it was important to introduce Myrnin, who is a fan favorite character, into the mix early, so he makes a short appearance this season.”To find out more, check out these sites for the scoop on Rachel Caine, The Morganville Vampires Books and Morganville: The Series.

Morganville: The
Series – The show stars fan favorites Robert Picardo as Oliver (Star Trek:
Voyager) and Amber Benson (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) as Amelie, as well as
Lindsay Seidel (Claire), Jordan Taylor Farris (Shane), Haileigh Todd (Eve), Ben
Easter (Michael), Nikki Donley (Hannah), Afomia Hailemeskel (Monica), Jessi
Mechler (Gina), Taylor Murphy (Jennifer), Gregory Connors (Brandon) and Chase
Ryan Jeffery (Myrnin). It is directed by Blake Calhoun,
known for his award-winning and groundbreaking digital series Pink and
Continuum, the show was filmed on location in Texas on a Blackmagic camera.

Rachel Caine – is a fictional character herself … a pen name
of writer Roxanne Conrad. Since 2003, Rachel has written in the adult Urban
Fantasy genre (the Weather Warden, Outcast Season, Revivalist and Red Letter
Days series) as well as in Young Adult fiction (the Morganville Vampires series
and award-winning novel Prince of Shadows). She is the author of more than forty
novels and many short stories, and is regularly featured in anthology collections,
most recently the Charlaine Harris edited Dead But Not Forgotten.